A Little Rhine Must Fall (11 page)

“Well?”

“Well, what?” he asked, a fake innocent look on his face.

“Spill it. What took so long?” There was no way that she was out there complimenting him on his choice of spouse.

He grinned and sat down on the bed. “Turn over,” he said and when I did he started to rub my back.

“Did you talk about the bathroom?” I asked.

“A little,” he said. “She’s really sorry. She said that she told the girls that it was up to you whether they got to keep it.”

“Making me the bad guy,” I said.

“I told her that and she’s going to ask you first next time.”

“Perfect,” I growled. “Next time. What else?” I knew there had to be more. It sounded like Mark had been won over to the enemy’s camp.

“She says that she doesn’t get to spend enough time with the girls.”

“What!” I rose up off the bed and was gently pushed back down.

“She says that
your
mother gets to see the girls every day, and that it’s not fair.”

I buried my face in the comforter. “You’ve got to be kidding,” I mumbled.

“She thinks that she should get to come over more often.” His fingers found a knot and went to work. I moaned.

“Kill me now.”

Mark laughed. “I said that I thought her perception might be a little off.”

“A
little
off!?”

“Yup.” He kept massaging. “She’s just hurt because you never call her and ask for advice, or go out to lunch or shopping or anything.”

I rolled on my back and glared at him. “I don’t call my
own
mother and ask for advice. Why would I call
her
? Besides, it’s natural for me to want to spend more time with my mother. She’s my mother! I don’t see you calling up my father and going out to lunch!”

Mark arranged some pillows on his side of the bed and got comfortable. “True. But I don’t think it’s going to make a difference with her.”

“Of course not,” I grumbled. “That would mean that she lived in reality instead of in her little make-believe world.”

“She thinks that you don’t like her.”

“Really?” I rolled my eyes. “I’m pretty sure that the feeling is mutual.” I saw the pain on his face and realized that we were talking about his mother. It wasn’t fair to throw Mark into the middle of this. I backpedaled furiously. “Just kidding!” I patted his knee. “You know I love your mother!”

Mark looked serious. “You have to remember, Piper, that my mother is all alone. She doesn’t have a husband or other children; she just has me. Could you try to cut her a little slack?”

I loved him so much. I would promise anything. Whether I could really
do
it was another matter. “Sure, hon. I’ll try to be nicer.”

“Thanks, babe,” Mark gave me a kiss.

I couldn’t leave it totally alone. “My mom is
not
over here every day.”

“I know, honey.” Mark kept kissing me.

“She hasn’t been over at all in the last week,” I insisted.

Mark grabbed me and pinned my body on the bed. “Are you going to keep talking about your mother? It’s not really what I want to be thinking about right now.”

I grinned. “Would you rather talk about
your
mother?”

He bit my bottom lip and growled, “Shut up. Now.”

Chapter Nine:

Patrol

I awoke two hours later, crushed under Mark’s arm, and sweating with our combined body heat. When I gently detangled myself, he flipped over on his other side and started to snore. I grinned and quickly threw on some sweatpants to go out and walk the dog.

Harvey was housetrained as long as I reminded him that the bathroom was outside. If it was raining, or the grass was wet, or there was thunder, or there
might
be thunder, or it was too hot, or he just didn’t feel like going outside, Harvey would pee in the house. That meant that he had to be crated at night, because my Voice command wouldn’t last all night.

Of course he was fast asleep on the couch and felt very mistreated to be dragged outside and forced to urinate in the middle of the night. He gave me a soulful look and slowly inched his way out the sliding glass door. I followed him out to make sure that he went off the porch and into the grass.

I don’t watch a lot of scary movies because my imagination for horror is quite good all on its own. And, with everything I’ve been through, I don’t need any more mental images keeping me awake at night. One of my biggest fears is that, one night when I’m walking across my living room, I will look out into the dark backyard and see a man silhouetted against the white privacy fence. Don’t ask me why that is so frightening to me. It just gives me the willies. About the same freakiness as pressing your face up against a window to look out and there being a face right there looking in. Igh!

I wasn’t really conscious yet, and was trying to stay that way so that I could quickly go to sleep after putting up the dog. I had trailed Harvey over to the dog door before looking up. My heart stopped. There
was
a black figure silhouetted against the fence. I froze. What to do? What to do? Call Mark? Call the police? Scream? Before I could decide, the screen door behind me squeaked open and I went with screaming.

“Hi, Piper,” a soft voice greeted me.

I managed to choke the scream off in my throat so as to not wake Mark, and what came out was more a gurgle.

“Grgglleph!”

Annabeth was a slight, rather mousy looking woman, at least in her human form. When she shifted she became eight feet of very hairy,
very
stinky, skunk ape. I had helped her and her son when they had been in a difficult situation and had introduced them to the USB. Annabeth felt like she owed me and had moved into my neighborhood. None of which explained what she was doing in my backyard at one o’clock in the morning.

“Do you mind if I leave my clothes here?” she asked, starting to strip.

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” I yelped. “Hold it! Why are you shifting in my backyard?”

A gentle breeze fanned my neck from behind and Cecily was standing on the porch. Since the night was
her
time, she was all vamped out and moving at super-human speeds. It took longer for my brain to realize that she was the figure I’d seen against the fence than it took for her to cross the yard.

“Piper,” she greeted me, eyes scanning the yard.

I crossed my arms around my chest. “What’s going on?”

Cecily flicked a glance at me and tried to look innocent. “Nothing,” she said.

“Uh-huh.”

Annabeth slipped out of her dress and started to take off her bra. I closed my eyes and prayed that Mark stayed asleep and in bed.

“What’s going on, Annabeth?” I asked before she could shift and not be able to answer questions.

She looked at Cecily and managed to scrunch even smaller. “She asked me to patrol the yard this evening.”

“Patrol.”

“Yes.” The underwear was starting to follow the bra and I turned my back to give her some privacy. There was a prickling of magic across my skin and then a horrible stench.

I tried not to gag too visibly. I think it hurt Annabeth’s feelings when no one wanted to be near her, and believe me, you do
not
want to offend an eight-foot monkey.

Cecily was trying to drift away so I grabbed her arm. “What’s going on, Cecily?”

She shrugged. “I just thought that with everything going on, you could use some protection at night.”

I pointed at Harvey who was happily relieving himself in the grass. “I have a guard dog.”

She snorted. “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”

I frowned. Harvey
was
a horrible guard dog. He barked at all the wrong things, and welcomed complete strangers with love. When Mark went out of town on business, I would often wish for a huge, fierce dog that was trained to only bark at red-eyed, drooling monsters. No bark, no monster, no worries.

“Come on, Cecily,” I yawned. “We both know that something is up. I’m tired. I want to go to bed. Just tell me and then get Godzilla here,” I pointed at Annabeth, “off my porch before my husband comes out. Speaking of which,” I turned to the skunk ape. “I do
not
appreciate you and Floyd using my backyard as a photo shoot in the middle of the day.” I stopped and revised my statement. “Or
any
time of day. We live in a subdivision, for Pete’s sake! Go take pictures in the swamp! What if someone had seen you?”

Annabeth huffed noisily, which sent a wave of stench up my nose and made me cough. “Glad we’ve got that cleared up,” I said.

I turned back to Cecily and waited. And waited. Finally, she cracked. “Okay,” she threw her hands up in the air. “It will be easier to keep you safe if you know what is going on.”

I didn’t think I liked the sound of that.

She made a face. “We’ve got a little situation.”

“A situation,” I said dryly. “Worse than aliens failing to meet us on the moon?”

“Yes.”

Now I was sure. I really did
not
like the sound of that.

Her eyes kept tracking around the backyard, looking for something. Or someone. Not good. Not good at all. Someone was coming to hurt my family and Cecily thought they were dangerous enough that I needed ‘round the clock protection.

I turned to go back in the house.

“Where are you going?” Cecily asked.

“To bed,” I announced. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to hear about it.”

She grabbed my elbow and dragged me back. “Too late, slurpee. I should have told you before, so now you’re going to have to listen.”

I sat down on one of the porch chairs. Harvey came back inside, gave a friendly sniff to Cecily’s shoes and settled down at my feet to sleep. I wished my life was that simple. Eat, sleep, pee on the carpet, well, maybe not the last one, but the ability to live completely in the present without fear or worry.

Cecily sat down next to me, if you could call it “sitting.” She was perched on the edge of the chair, a coiled spring, ready to jump at a second’s notice. I was right. I really didn’t want to hear the explanation for this.

“Do you remember Matthew?” she began.

“Matthew?” I searched my memory. “I don’t think so …” Memory struck. I jumped to my feet in terror. “Oh, no! No! No! No! You’re kidding right? Tell me you’re kidding!” Now I was the one searching the backyard for attackers.

Cecily pulled me back down on the chair. “I told you when you staked him that he wasn’t dead. He was only incapacitated for awhile, healing.”

“You said it would take a long time for him to heal!” I accused her.

She shrugged. “The witches decided to help out and sped up the process a bit.”

I pulled my feet up into the chair and hugged my knees. “It wasn’t my fault,” I whispered. “The Synod were the ones who caused him to get staked. You don’t think he’s mad at
me?
”

She gave me a look.

“Yeah. Right. No such luck, huh?” With all the rest of my life’s drama to deal with, I had pushed the worry about an angry vampire, intent on revenge, to the end of the worry list. Now he had jumped himself to the top. Just peachy.

“You think he’s coming here,” I said, not really a question since she was obviously patrolling my backyard with Annabeth.

“Yes,” she confirmed, causing my heart to sink. I’d really been hoping that I was wrong.

“Isn’t there enough going on with the aliens and whatnot? Does he really have to do this now?” I whined.

Cecily just looked at me.

I wiggled on my chair. “Maybe he’s coming to, you know, thank me or something. I didn’t cut off his head! That would have been permanent. I just staked him. He should thank me!” I was working myself up into indignation at his rudeness and lack of gratitude.

Cecily kept staring at me.

“Fine,” I spit. “He’s probably not coming to thank me. He’s probably coming to kill me.”

She kept looking at me.

I narrowed my eyes and guessed again. “Torture me?”

She still didn’t say anything.

I rolled my eyes. “Torture me, kill my family in front of me, and then kill me too.”

She finally nodded. Bingo.

I stood up and stretched. “Well, good to know. I’m going to bed now.”

Cecily stood up too. “Are you okay?”

I smiled. “Yup.”

“Really?”

I thought about it a moment. Yup, still okay. I was a different person than the woman who had agonized over staking a vampire. Those days were gone.

I faced Cecily, “You stop him from showing up uninvited, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

She raised one eyebrow.

“I took care of him once before. I can do it again. And this time, he won’t have anything to thank me for.”

Chapter Ten:

Hormones

I had to get up to pee in the middle of the night, which made me a little cranky in the morning, feeling like I hadn’t gotten my fair share of sleep. I remembered these days. The nausea (which still wasn’t too bad), the having to pee every five minutes, the emotional mood swings. The first trimester of pregnancy was horrid, until you hit the
second
trimester and your back started to hurt, you
still
had to pee all the time, and people thought you looked fat. Then, all was forgotten in the
third
trimester, when you couldn’t see your feet, your back was
killing
you, you waddled like a duck, and you were getting up to pee two or three times a night. Then labor and delivery hit. Ah, the miracle of birth. Such things to look forward to.

I studied my face in the bathroom mirror. I felt old. Old and tired. There were definitely dark circles under my eyes, but wrinkles? None. I parted my hair and examined the roots. Still brown. Not a grey hair in sight. Now, your normal woman in her late twenties would be thrilled by this. Me? I was the freak who was worried that I wasn’t aging fast enough.

Mark stumbled into the bathroom. “‘morning,” he mumbled, still half asleep.

“Do I look older to you?” I asked.

“Mhh?”

“Do I look older to you?”

He rubbed his eyes and stared at me blearily. “Older?”